


And How Will I Explain This Mess?

by FrecklesHideNothing



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff and Angst, Human Castiel, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-10 14:29:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrecklesHideNothing/pseuds/FrecklesHideNothing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's hospitalised in critical condition and Sam struggles to maintain his sanity. Enter the mystery man in the next bed</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. And there I was, struggling to breathe...

Sundays are the worst. Every day is difficult to endure, but Sundays always seem to bring their own special brand of tortured restlessness. Perhaps it’s the thought of returning to another working week; sporadic time to spend together, or maybe it’s the lingering memory of how their Sundays used to be spent: football games in a bar, indulging in food, alcohol and each other’s company. They laughed a lot on those days. His life was optimistic.

For the past six weeks, his life has been stable. 'Stable' has become a filthy word, offering platitudes but not explanations.

Sam watches his stable brother and listens to his stable heartbeat, echoed by a series of stable machines. A stable slew of nurses monitoring his stable life signs. In his more belligerent moments, Sam will unkindly critique the nurses; vital statistics, personality, attractiveness, and deem none of them to be hot enough to tend to his brother, but then one will offer a reassuring smile and the gift of caffeine, and Sam will squirm his gratitude in an overeager attempt to mask his shame.

When Dean Winchester originally entered St Mary’s, he was unrecognisable, even to his own kin. His face was so badly beaten that it distorted his strong jaw and prominent cheekbones. Initially, Sam had cried mistaken identity; this weakened body could not share DNA with the charismatic, antagonistic, fiercely protective Dean Winchester. The body they propelled through the hospital, a vanguard of medics in orbit, could not belong to his pig-headed brother... Yet here he sat, lower back aching no matter how he twisted his spine in attempts to loosen it. This was his sixth Sunday vigil; his doubts about identity of the body lying prone before him had dwindled as the swelling subsided. Now that eyelids could be prized open to check for dilation, there was no mistaking the green iris underneath.

So why did he feel so alien? Trapped by a double-lined peach curtain which was intended to offer privacy, Sam felt nothing but entombed. The curtain only served to remind him of the (albeit hushed) noises of a world that continued, regardless of the Winchester brothers. The curtain also served to remind him that, although Sunday offered extended visiting hours, it did not change the fact that Sam had spent his entire visit thus far, as he did every visit, in an agitated silence.

He knew the theories, that it was helpful to coma patients; hearing the voices of loved ones sometimes worked miracles. Sam had lost his faith in miracles around the time his mother died; losing his father confirmed the sanctity of his lack of belief. Now, he simply could not condone the idea of soliloquising to his absent brother. Every attempt to part his lips felt like a goodbye; permission for his brother to slip gently into that great night. So the silence lingered, heavy and oppressive, like a fog it seeped into his psyche, contaminating his optimism and choking him from within, until the pressure became unbearable and the hateful peach curtain threatened to shroud not only his brother, but his own broken soul.

How long he dwelt on this obsession, he will never be entirely sure. Perhaps it was a matter of seconds, but suddenly the fear was real: Dean would die and Sam would be forced to endure a life reflecting on what once was; never truly moving forward from this point, because no matter who he encountered, who he came to love, they would never know Dean, and therefore never truly know Sam. 

In a fit of near hysteria, he leapt from his crippling position in the hospital chair and threw back the curtain to keep the nothingness at bay. Instead of being greeted by reapers, skeletal and other-worldly, Sam Winchester encountered an angel...

It takes a surprisingly long time for Sam's mental and visual faculties to realign and recognise that what he is seeing is not actually celestial in the literal sense. It's a close won battle too, because the elements seem to be conspiring to make the figure in front of him as angelic as possible. Granted, if he'd been thinking rationally, the fact that the object of his gaze was lying prone in a hospital bed probably wasn't the first indication of divinity. Yet, it was definitely an audible gasp that escaped Sam's adrenaline and anxiety befuddled brain via his underused vocal cords. The crisp autumnal sun had captured the figure so blindingly, that for an instant, he wondered why the other occupants in the room had not been drawn into this moment. The dust particles in the air seemed to take flight and choreograph themselves into a fluid ballet that twisted and looped to his amazement. The moment was infinite, yet just as instantly non-existent: the clouds shifted and once again, yellow-tinged fluorescent lighting enveloped the ward.  
Sam physically shook himself, glad actually, for the first and possibly only time, of his brother's lack of consciousness. He had most definitely earned himself a patented Dean Winchester slap upside the head and the much loathed title of Samantha in this latest escapade.

There was also the fact that in his personal mythology, angels most certainly did not sleep, which is what the body in front of him was definitely doing, the gentle exhalation and inhalation of breath was mirrored in the rise and fall of the rib cage. The flux of a different heartbeat to echo the one he knew as well as his own.

Sam flexed his shoulders and ran his fingers through his hair, tucking it behind his ears in a futile attempt to make the strands stay away from his face. Perhaps he should talk to someone. Anyone. That was the rational thing to do, he knew it was what he would be advising, were he not at the epicentre of this head-fuck, so why did he invite the silence? Denial was a possibility, but hardly achievable when Sleeping Beauty lay before his eyes. Fear? Pain? Regret? Sam worried his bottom lip between his teeth as he pushed back the much less suffocating, but not entirely welcomed curtain, exposing both Dean and himself to a ward full of strangers, all too lost in their own misery to care.

A strange sense of purpose flooded his veins in that moment: Dean was beyond his immediate ability to help, but perhaps he would be able to solve his own ailment. Sam had never developed Dean and their father's tendency to shy away from their own emotions. Perhaps he was his mother's son, although he'd never truly know, being too young to know her, much less himself when they parted. He could not make his brother better with wishing and hoping, but there was a possibility of him breaking down his own mental barriers; scratching at the wall until he found sense in his inability to share this trauma with people he knew cared for his well-being. So pleased was Sam with his new focus, that he answered the question, which had not been a question at all, with such absent dismissal that it was possible any other creature would have taken flight in umbrage.

This, apparently, was no ordinary creature.

Careful blue eyes adjusted into his line of vision, continuing a dialogue Sam was not yet privy to.

“So, why do you return with such regularity?"

"Excuse me?" Sam's flustered mind sifted through the available information in hopes of garnering a clue as to where he stood in this conversation. There appeared to be no malice or judgement in the questioning, in fact, the owner of the voice now projected mild disinterest as he rotated his whole head and fixed his gaze upon the ceiling as he repeated his line of enquiry.

"You monopolise visitation hours, daily, yet you do not engage in conversation with the patient. I wish to know why you perpetuate this cycle."

"Well..." Sam huffed, buying time for his brain to decide if he was under attack or being offered something else entirely, "he's in a coma; talking isn't exactly his strong point right now".

"That does not supply an adequate answer to my question. I am perfectly aware of why you receive no response; I wish to know why you provide no stimulus." The chin remained tilted towards the overhead lighting, but the eye closest to him was clearly observing his looming figure. No fear of offence or worry for self, just calm, clinical observation.

"I... I am disinclined to engage in a one-sided conversation with someone who cannot appreciate it." Sam's words sounded false, riddled with unnatural formality and a nagging suspicion that this was not even close to being the real reason.

"Are you a medical professional?"

"Me? God no; I'm pre-law. Was pre- law. Still am, I suppose; just needed to take a break to be with Dean..."

"Dean." There was no inflection in the smoky voice to suggest a question, but Sam answered it like an automaton, no precognition, just action.

"My brother." Pride, loyalty, guilt, pity and confusion combined in his gut to make a volatile cocktail of emotion that churned so painfully in his stomach, that Sam turned heel and fled the room a full forty-five minutes before his allotted time. There was no splutter of half-formed words, no burning of the eyes in preparation for tears. Just a desperate, primal need to not physically occupy this particular point in space and time a moment longer. 

It retrospect, Sam will blame his actions on the echo of the word “brother” that passed chapped lips. It was probably just as well that Sam was not there to witness the subsequent salutation from said lips...

"Hello Dean."

Sam is ever the little brother; in awe of, frustrated by, and emboldened because of who his brother is. Yet he is also wrapped in that rare sense of security that, despite the dodgy parental hand life dealt him, kismet made sure he had a brother that loved him with a ferocity that was borderline unhealthy in most psychological spheres.Perhaps this is why he gently allows the chinks in his mental armour to appear; he is not the big brother, he craves the support and guidance of that older sibling, he needs the finite knowledge that all is not lost.

Why he seeks it here, in a communal refuge of strangers, rather than the friends he has come to build a second family around, is not something he dwells upon just yet. The tattoo just above his heart proclaims him a little brother, its pair lies dormant, so Sam does what he needs to do to survive; he reaches out to the tendrils of light where he can find them.

The beginning is slow, because beginnings always are. A gradual build of characterisation and convoluted plot devices. It takes time, care and a fundamental love of the subject to weave such pretty patterns with words; Sam will frequently wonder why he never wrote any of this down.

The Monday after his... ah, spontaneous departure, Sam's visits are dictated by the restrictions that the obligatory bar job has placed upon his time. For some vengeful reason, the world continued to turn despite Dean Winchester's delicate vital signs. As tedious as the job and the necessity of having said job may be, is allows a certain level of negotiation as to when he spends the time in the company of his employers. Easy access to alcohol was a blessing in the initial aftermath, but he now finds the whiskey leaves a strangely charred taste in his mouth.

Sam might tell himself that nothing substantial has altered in the past sixteen hours, but his footfalls echo his trepidation. The curtain once again encircles his unknowing brother, but fate, or some more practical lack of attention by some primary care-giver, has resulted in a slither of curtain remaining open on the opposite side of the enclosure to the one Sam enters. The side of the angels. Since he never has been a vicious person, Sam does not snort at his mental mockery, it wasn't aimed towards anyone other than his own foolish mind anyway. The invitation, nonetheless, is there and Sam's steady hand does not betray his giddy heart as he slides the peripheral curtain all the way back to its point of origin.

He expected movement, a turn of body, a rustle of sheets, but as he casually glances over his shoulder, Sam identifies the reason for the silence. Blue eyes flick to his with practiced accuracy; the accompanying body has rotated sideways and lies along the length of hip, thigh and shoulder: watching. Sam tilts his chin in greeting and waits to receive a stilted, half-nod before taking his sentinel, pausing only to angle the chair so that the entirety of his back does not face the other man. A quick peripheral glance tells Sam he has achieved something as a gentle puff of air is matched by a subtle diffusion of tension in the shoulders. Sam tilts his face back towards his wayward brother and feels something like the beginnings of a smile tug at his mouth for the first time in six weeks.

They exchange no more words on that initial day, but faces can often be as expressive as words, perhaps more so. Sam returns to his customary vigil, absently grinding a thumbnail between his two lower front teeth, but there is a sense of reassurance that was not there yesterday. The knowledge that a simple flicker of motion towards the man behind him, will earn a flex of the eyebrow not dissolved by the pillow. It's an invitation that he is not yet willing to accept, but an invitation nonetheless.


	2. Drawing Back the Curtains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm playing around with narrative at the moment - not sure if this is coming across, but the idea was to have the early chapters be formal and internalized to reflect the current character perspective. It should be introverted and not the easiest of reads, but that should smooth out as the story develops and other characters pick up the narrative. 
> 
> Let me know if it's truly hideous...

He practises smiling in the mirror, contorting his face in a twitch of muscles and flash of teeth. He toys with inflection too; twisting a simple one-syllable salutation until the meaning has been rung out of it. Locked in the privacy of his anonymous apartment, he can poke, prod and pummel the word so that it expresses a myriad of emotions he’s not ready to feel: relief, frustration, gratitude, anger, fear and confusion. They summersault through his chosen word until he feels like he might just be able to make something of all the hours of rehearsal. 

He shaves for the occasion. A ridiculous care to take, but the butterflies raging Holy War in his gut force him from the safety of his bed far earlier than he would have liked. Placing the razor down, he stares at himself in the mirror; he’s aged around the eyes, an inevitability of falling into this pit, he supposes, but he doesn’t see the same weakness that dogged him the last time he was brave enough to examine his own reflection. Hands reach up to tuck the hair behind both ears, instinctive, like breathing, it’s borne of muscle memory. The hair was something Dean always hated. Hates. Present tense. Will always hate. Future tense. Tenses are important, even if they are pretence. He wonders idly how many time a day he performs the action without conscious thought. 

Foolishly, naively, earnestly, he continues to rehearse his opening greeting all the way to the hospital. His facial expression has been carefully mapped – it’s not a smile in the strictest sense, but he recognises its brightness nonetheless. He’s desperate to claw away the rigid formality that saturated that first encounter. The claw and scratch and bite until they are both human again. Until all three are human again; living, breathing, fully functioning organisms that love fiercely, because Sam’s life feels like it depends on him crawling his way out of his own mind. 

So to say that Sam is disappointed to enter the ward and discover the curtains closed is something of an understatement. Hell is indeed just a sauna. The expectation was that his brother’s body would be protected from view, but since he was made aware of its existence, Sam had always found the next curtain to be open; not in invitation, but perhaps anticipation or maybe even expectation? Careful planning and preparation evaporates like the illusion the hope it provided probably was. 

He stands, dumb, torn on the cusp of indecision, hovering over the shells of two entirely different people. Dean is the known quantity, but he doesn’t have the strength left to worry over another unknown. His fingers move to twitch over the area he suspects the gap in the drapes to be, when a voice forces his heart into his mouth and his feet to scuttle back towards the safety of his brother. A reflex rather than a real fear; he’s still reluctant to be caught eavesdropping on someone he is yet to officially meet. And his greeting is far too prepared to waste on an apology. He needs to get out of his own head as fast as possible. 

‘So this entire visit is going to be received in petulant silence, is that correct?’ 

Sam fails to recognise the voice, which would rule out any of the medical staff that frequent this ward. He may have an affinity for introspection at the moment, but he’s not suffering any failings in his observational skills. Nor does it belong to the man in the next bed. That pitch and tone were probably burned deep into Sam’s psyche the moment he remembered just how wonderful it felt to breathe. 

So all that remains for him to do is to stand like a child hiding behind the curtain and wait. It doesn’t even occur to him until it’s all said and done that he doesn’t even spare his brother a glance in this moment. 

‘Really. This is beneath even your pettiness.’ The voice is crisp. Sharp. Definitely male. It’s utterly lacking in the hushed, pleading, gentle tones that the locale inspires in most of its visitors. ‘Very well. I would strongly recommend that you make your decision quickly, but I’m sure you, of all people, understand the need for swiftness in this matter.’

There’s no pause in order to accommodate a reply, just the brittle ring of the curtain hooks as their rings are propelled towards their terminus with a savage snap. The footfall echoes across the ward, and Sam takes a moment to wonder what kind of man wears dress shoes to visiting hours? It’s too late in the evening for this to be a simple stop on the way home from the office…

‘I imagine you caught the tail end of that exchange.’ And that is absolutely the voice that Sam recognises. His heartbeat accelerates at being caught and the childish temptation to run and hide without answering is a challenging urge to quell. He’d made no sound when he entered, no greeting to any of the duty nurses lest he should be deflected from his goal of finally getting to utter his greeting, so long prepared for. So what supernatural sixth sense is allowing this recognition? His heart stutters in fear and any possible reply is squeezed out with the last of his courage. The silence is fraught. 

‘I can see your boots.’

Sam can’t pretend to be anything but utterly dumbfounded as he glances down and discovers that the curtain, that he’d spent so much of his recent history being obscured by, actually finishes a whole foot before it reaches the ground. More sanitary that way, he thinks abstractly while embarrassment, ire and giddiness flood his system too quickly so that it’s with a slightly drunken hand that he reaches out and pulls back the last barrier. 

Of all of the meaning he wanted to pour into his greeting, what actually manifests is rueful, bashful even.

‘Hey.’ 

The answer is just the barest inclination of the head. He’s sitting up today, Sam notes, propped at an unnatural forty-five degree angle. Crisp white sheets pool around his waist and his hospital gown seems oddly flattering to the heavy shadow of facial hair that has blossomed over his jaw. He has maintained eye contact and is clearly expecting an answer to the question that Sam determinedly feigns ignorance of. 

‘Huh?’ Is admittedly all the deviousness he can muster. There’s a terse puff of breath in reply, but it doesn’t feel chiding. 

‘I suppose we were destined for this,’ he clarifies, as if that were any clarification at all. 

It’s only as Sam tunes into the electronic echo of his brother’s heartbeat that he realises he has yet to acknowledge either men in the way they deserve. He skims an untrained, but experienced eye over Dean before turning back to face the inquisition. 

‘I’m sorry, what were you saying?’ Sam’s voice has lost some of its startled squawk, but it still sounds alien to his ears. He feels a queasiness building in his gut, a panic – like this might become a situation that he might not be able to escape. The sick knowledge of knowing he’s done something wrong and having no reassuring solution to cling to… He flounders. 

But salvation, it seems, is swift and benevolent. 

‘I was musing,’ continues his companion, apparently unaware of Sam’s fractious emotions, ‘That we seem destined to intrude on each other’s most private moments. Don’t you think?’ It’s certainly not a reprimand; it’s a simple invitation of comradery. 

‘Yeah. Yeah, it certainly seems that way.’ He pauses, wondering if he should offer an apology for eavesdropping, hiding, interrupting or all of the above. He beings to form the shape of the words in his mouth, but he’s dismissed by a gentle flick of the hand nearest to their shared space. 

‘It’s not of import…’ 

Sam’s slow to fill the resulting pause; his grasp of language, like his movement, is sluggish and awkward; he’s not taken the opportunity to practise much recently. It’s as if he doesn’t know what’s expected of him. Or that he’s grown too small for the body that he inhabits. 

‘Cas,’ says the only conscious witness to his temporary idiocy. He touches his chest like he’s trying to teach a new language. 

‘Cas,’ repeats Sam, no concept of the meaning of the word. 

‘Yes.’ Infinite patience. ‘And you are?’ He’s remarkably gentle, soothing almost, but Sam still cringes hopelessly at his own ineptitude. He’d prepared excessively in order to orchestrate the initial interaction, but there was no thought put in to what might come after. He’s not terribly keen on long term planning at the moment. 

‘Sam.’ Finally, but it’s a croaky whisper, so he chokes on his fear and repeats himself as clearly as he feels able. 

‘Sam.’ Cas’ voice feels warm and strong around his name. ‘Well, Sam, since we seem to be privy to each other’s grief –‘

‘He’s not dead!’ Even Sam’s startled by the anger in those words. It’s another muscle memory, borne out of fighting for Dean’s care and upkeep while he’s unable to do so himself. His eyes mirror Cas’ for the briefest of seconds; widened in shock, but Cas recovers far quicker than he does. 

‘Forgive me.’ He’s not demure or hurried in his words. ‘It was a poor choice of wording on my part.’ His head inclines slightly towards Sam, but he maintains eye contact the entire time. He’s remarkably powerful considering he’s still propped at such an obscure angle while Sam towers above him in a suddenly useless body. 

‘I… uh…’ Sam’s never been filled with such impotent frustration as he is at that moment. He wants this. He planned minutely for this. Cas is apparently offering this and all Sam has to do is reach out and accept the help - friendship even - but he stutters. 

In the end it’s Dean that sparks him back into action. There’s no miraculous recovery, no ‘touched-by-an-angel’ twitch of fingers, just a steady inhalation and exhalation of breath. He’s here because of Dean. He’s being offered support because of Dean. And Hell, he’s self aware enough to worry that if he doesn’t do something soon, Dean may not have him to come back to. 

He can do nothing but take a centring breath and scrape the chair, loud in the hushed room and place the legs firmly in the point midway between the foot of the neighbouring beds. He can see both men with a simple flick of eyes. 

‘It’s fine,’ he sighs. It’s a poor facsimile of a smile, but he does his best to pick up the threads of a conversation that has stalled far too long. 

Cas’ features don’t change, still open, still welcoming, still powerful. ‘Tell me about him,’ he invites. No expectation, just guidance through a myriad of emotions. 

Sam’s torn for an instant; there’s so much to tell and he’s seeing everything through the adoring eyes of a younger sibling who’s utterly terrified at the thought of losing their older counterpart. The beginning would feel too much like a biography – the most recent too much like a fond farewell. So he picks a neutral point in time and space, but one that he knows brims with the details that make them brothers in every sense. 

‘You ever have a slinky as a kid?’ 

It startles a raised eyebrow and a faint shake of the head from Cas. ‘A slinky? No, I don’t believe that was a pleasure I had.’ He’s not mocking, but he toys around the edge of a smile. 

‘Okay,’ says Sam, settling easily into his role the orator of his brother’s life. ‘So, Dean and the slinky…’


End file.
